Bleeding Kansas

Bleeding Kansas was a series of violent confrontations between the abolitionist Jayhawkers and pro-slavery Border Ruffians in the US states of Kansas and Missouri in the years leading up to the American Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed for Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery, causing a major debate in the new states. Pro-slavery voices argued that settlers had the right to bring their property with them to the new states, arguing that it applied to slaves as well. Abolitionists argued that slavery was unethical, opposed the expansion of "slave power", and feared that slaveholders would control the land to the exclusion of non-slaveholders. When elections were held for the new state legislature on 30 March 1855, thousands of illegal voters came from the American South and New England to support the opposing sides, and the pro-slavery faction was able to sway the election in their favor. However, a US Congress committee sent to investigate the matter concluded that the election would have yielded a Free Stater government without the voter fraud. On 2 July 1855, the new pro-slavery legislature took power in Pawnee, and it passed laws favorable to slaveholders and adopted Missouri's slave code in the "Lecompton Constitution". At the same time, the abolitionists formed a rival legislature in Topeka and passed their own constitution in opposition to the pro-slavery legislature. President Franklin Pierce recognized the Lecompton Constitution, and the US government declared the Topeka government to be in a state of insurrection. In October 1855, the radical abolitionist John Brown arrived in Kansas to fight slavery. On 21 May 1856, pro-slavery Democrats and Missourians sacked the Republican stronghold of Lawrence, and, that same month, US Senator Preston Brooks caned abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor for denouncing slavery in Kansas and humiliating its supporters. On 24 May, Brown and his abolitionist "Jayhawkers" seized five pro-slavery men from their homes at Pottawatomie Creek and hacked them to death with broadswords. In August 1856, Brown and his followers fought 400 of the pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" in the Battle of Oswatomie, and the hostilities raged for two more months until Brown and his followers left Kansas. In 1858, the Border Ruffians killed five Freestaters at Marais des Cygnes in the last major outbreak of violence. By the time the violence ended in 1859, 56 people were dead. That same year, the Leavenworth Constitution, which supported universal male suffrage, was left to die in committee in the Senate, but the fourth and final Free Stater constitution, the Wyandotte Constitution, was approved by Kansans on 4 October 1859. Confirmation of the constitution was postponed due to the South's control of the Senate, and it was only after the American Civil War broke out in 1861 that the US Senate - now only consisting of the northern Union states - approved Kansan statehood.